For Your Consideration

Awards nomination season is here for published authors. If you are a voting member of an award association, I would greatly appreciate your consideration of the two books published under my name this year.

I should mention that, beginning this year and for a limited window of time, I am eligible for a John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author. This annual award is given to the best new writer whose first professional work of science fiction or fantasy was published within the two previous calendar years. It’s worth noting that, of 46 authors who have won the award, 17 won during their second year of eligibility.

Here are my two works of science fiction published in 2018 and eligible for nomination.

Cover Art by Julie Dillon, who is also eligible for awards as a cover illustrator!

118,000 WordsScience Fiction/Steampunk/Space Opera

In this genre-straddling secondary world ‘spacepunk steam opera’ a crew of airship smugglers must choose between a simple payday and saving the world from cultists, aliens, and their own gods.

AO3 Tags for FLOTSAM:

Internalized guilt, technology and magic, fix it with food, female lead, found family, airships, survivors guilt, life goals, shh the gods might hear you, alchemy as magic as science, tomb raiding, treasure hunts as career choice, never a good thing when the ex shows up, Coffee or get out, friends who put up with a lot, back alley dealings, sporks, all the sporks, practical servingware, flesh eating mermaids, what’s that glowing thing maybe we should touch it, don’t turn on the alien technology, favorite jackets, why is the rum gone, the swashbuckle life chooses you, late night philosophy, argument avoidance, making new friends, making new friends with aliens, interstellar diplomacy, alien visitors, alien researchers, alien invaders, recycling old technology, loyalty is real love, no romance, aromantic mc, video chats with gods, over-salted food, the captain can’t cook, pick your fights, pick your friends, when something seems too good to be true it’s a plot, genre fences straddled, space opera but I forgot to take them to space, non binary, sweet sweet gay boy, asexual, mechanics who are basically wizards, wind chime graffiti, best kebabs around, big heavy boxes of money as ballast, run for your life, OH YEAH GLOWING PUMPKINS AS PLANETARY LIGHTING, shattered planets, world building on LSD, Julie Dillon did the cover just LOOK AT IT, which one of us has the PTSD, ancient cults and their racist conspiracies, why do people with power make no sense, maybe don’t make a deal with the devil, gods give you headaches, spacepunk steam opera, people can be super selfish (yes MC, I’m talking about you, too), fear of abandonment, Oliver Twist backstory but steampunk, Tolkienesque races based on magical genetic engineering missteps, maybe gods don’t know best, destroying a sketchy history, where do you come up with this stuff, what if the littlest prince but airship pirates, the antagonist is just the worst but also you kinda want him to live in between bouts of wishing he would just die already, mind the cliffhangers, hopepunk, MC is not a chosen one, when you have bad news bring home takeout, a sporkful of sugar, sporkpunk is my brand, wear clothes you can move in, don’t give the grumpy guy a reason to cut you, grease stained tank tops, strange women with strange powers and OLD grudges, good(?) things come in unassuming packages, desert pilgrimages and how to arrive in style